


Preparations

by VampireBadger



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Pre-Game(s), Sibling Bonding, Spoilers for 999
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 06:46:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10457889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBadger/pseuds/VampireBadger
Summary: Aoi and Akane make their final preparations for their Nonary Game. Takes place before the games, but spoilers for 999 anyway.





	

They move in, during the last few days before their Nonary Game begins. There's still a lot of last minute work to do, tests to run and clues to hide. It's creepy, with just the two of them on the big, empty ship.

"It's not a ship," Akane reminds him, over and over again. Doesn't matter to Aoi. He remembers waking up on the _Gigantic_ when he was a kid, remembers the way the steel swayed under his feet when he walked, remembers the way the water had flooded into the cabin on D-Deck, remembers the way it chased him up the stairs, remembers, remembers, remembers…

"Are you going to be okay?" Akane asks, with three days to go before their Game is set to start. They're roaming the ship, going from one escape room to the next, making notes of the things they'll need to fix or buy over the next couple of days. Once the Game starts, there's no room for mistakes because there's no way they can fix them. Everything has to work, automatically, and on the first try.

"Only in some timelines," Aoi says, without looking up from the RED he's fiddling with. For some reason, it's only accepting the [8] bracelet every other try, and he's wondering if it's something he can fix himself, or if he'll have to install one of the spare REDs they have stored away. "Some timelines I'll be okay, some timelines I'll be horribly murdered, right?"

She doesn't answer, so Aoi grunts and slams a hand against the RED. He'll have to add it to the list of things to look at later. When he turns around, he's surprised to see Akane looking at him through wide eyes. She looks so much younger like that. More like his little sister than the mastermind behind all this. "Akane?" he asks. "You okay?"

"Don't joke about that," she says. "I _hate_ it when you joke about dying."

"I wasn't joking," Aoi says. "We're all going to die during this thing."

"But it's _worth_ it," Akane says. "You think so, don't you?"

"Course I do. It's to save your life, so it's worth _everything_." Aoi gives her a little one armed hug, wrapping his arm tight around her until she shrieks and fights him to wriggle out of his hold. "Stop it!" she says, laughing. "Stop!"

And for a moment, as first her laughter and then his echoes down the hallway, the dark atmosphere seems to lift, and fade away entirely.

-//-

Two days before the Game is set to start, Aoi finds Akane in the Morgue.

Of course, just like they're not really in a ship, the room isn't really a Morgue. Aoi's started calling it that after they started kidnapping the rest of the participants. Months ahead of time, some of them, and they've just been lying here, carefully kept unconscious.

"Everyone doing okay down here?" Aoi asks, striding toward his sister. He keeps his voice low, even though he knows they won't wake up just because he speaks a little too loudly.

"Fine," Akane says. "Just… checking. That everyone's okay."

She's standing between two beds at the moment. Clover's and Junpei's. When Aoi raises his eyebrows at her, she makes a show of reaching over Clover's bed, and checking the girl's pulse. Aoi's pretty sure Akane hadn't been looking at Clover before he walked in, though. "You'll get to see him soon," Aoi says, leaning sideways against one of the other beds.

"All of them," Akane says, still not looking at Junpei. "We'll see all of them soon."

Aoi takes pity on her. Not like he really wants to talk about Junpei himself, anyway. He knows Junpei is important—it's Akane's connection to her childhood friend that had saved her life on the real _Gigantic_ all those years ago. But Akane is still his little sister, and Aoi doesn't like thinking about the crush she still has on Junpei, and what that childhood crush might turn into after the Nonary Game is over, and Junpei knows everything.

Aoi is convinced that Junpei will either love Akane, or despise her. And he's not quite sure which is worse.

"Come on," he says, leaning over Clover's unconscious body to push Akane away from the sleeping bodies on the beds. "We have stuff to do."

"What kind of stuff?" Akane asks, turning to look sharply at him. "Did something break? Did we miss something? Did—"

"I made sandwiches," Aoi interrupts.

Akane blinks at him, owlishly. "Sandwiches."

"Bread," he says, very seriously, and Akane _almost_ smiles. "Cheese. Meat—"

She laughs, just a little. Probably the first time there's been any laughter at all in that room. "I didn't think about lunch at all," she says. "But I'm _starving_."

"Doesn't surprise me," Aoi says, shoving her again. Just a little, of course—a single piece of the medical equipment in this room is worth more than the two of them ever saw growing up after their parents died. He's not going to accidentally break any of it now. "You never remember the normal stuff, Akane. You rebuilt every inch of this ship—"

"It's not a ship."

"It _was_ a ship, and you rebuilt the whole thing from memory. But you can't remember to feed yourself."

"I'm just _busy_ ," Akane whines. She sounds like a little girl. "We're almost out of time."

"Food," Aoi says.

"But—"

"Food!"

She sticks her tongue out, but she lets him lead her to the sandwiches.

-//-

The day before the Nonary Game, Aoi and Akane spend most of the afternoon moving everyone from the Morgue to their respective cabins. The women they move easily enough, and after some coordination they manage to move most of the men. Akane holds their feet while Aoi grabs them around the shoulders, and they stumble down the halls like that. They take care of Kubota and Hongou first. Both siblings are silent as they move their two tormentors, and Aoi feels more satisfied than he had expected when he locks them into room one and room nine.

Then they move Light, who is tall but thin. If he wasn't so lanky, Akane probably could have carried him alone. Next is Junpei, which makes Akane happy but Aoi only gets extremely sarcastic.

"Akane," he says, when Junpei is locked away in his cabin. "Why did you kidnap him on laundry day?"

"What?"

"It must have been laundry day when you grabbed him," Aoi says. "Because no one would willingly choose to dress like that. Even Light is better dressed, and he's blind."

Akane swats his shoulder. "Be nice," she says. "I like him."

Aoi scoffs.

"Anyway," she says, tugging on the thin scarf wrapped all around his shoulders and arms. "He's still better dressed than you. What is this thing, honestly, a shoe string?"

He pulls away. "It's cool."

"No it's not!" Akane chirps, and she's cheerful as they spend their last evening together as brother and sister before they become just the people wearing bracelet [3] and bracelet [6], two strangers that don't even know each other. At the end of the night, before they go to their own rooms to lock themselves inside, Aoi gives his little sister a hug. "Stay safe," he tells her.

"You'll go through every door with me," Akane reminds him. And it's not really enough, because he knows he won't be able to protect her. But it does make him feel a little bit better. Enough that he can let go of her, and step through his own door, and lock it behind him.

It's exactly the same as everyone else's. He and Akane had talked about skipping their first puzzle and just joining up with everyone else at the staircase. But no. They had to do everything exactly right. No one could suspect that anything was off with them.

Aoi sits on one of the beds, and tries to breathe normally. He's not scared. He's not the same boy that was kidnapped into an experiment he didn't understand, one that almost killed his little sister.

He is Aoi Kurashiki, and he is going to play the Nonary Game.

Again.

**Author's Note:**

> So I just bought the Nonary games remaster, and I only managed to get about an hour into it before the urge to write this hit me. I'm marking it as complete for now, but I might come back and add more of Aoi's perspective as I play more of the game... we'll see.


End file.
